1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and method for manufacturing various kinds of bar-shaped bread, such as French bread, and more especially to a process of continuously manufacturing bar-shaped bread of various sizes and of uniform weight per unit size by winding up a continuously fed sheet of dough and dividing the wound dough body.
2. Prior Art
In the prior art method of manufacturing these kinds of bread, the shape of each type of bread to be produced is determined by an apparatus exclusively designed for manufacturing that type of bread.
In the prior art method, bread dough is measured and divided according to the length or thickness of the bread to be produced, the divided bread dough is shaped into a spheroid, the shaped bread dough is stretched into a desired length, and then the stretched bread dough is fermented and baked. In such a stretching process some drawbacks are inevitable, such as the gluten network of the bread dough being destroyed or a lower quality.
There has been no one automatic apparatus for shaping bar-shaped bread that can freely produce bread of any length and thickness without needing any type of extra shaping process.
A publication entitled A Collection of Well-known Art, published Feb. 20, 1980, by the Japanese Patent Office, shows a winder having a roller for winding up a continuous sheet of dough from one of its sides into a bar of dough.
The winder has not been used for shaping bar-shaped bread dough of various sizes from a continuously fed sheet of dough. It is used for obtaining a long rolled-up product that may then be cut into pieces of rolled-up dough. It has a drawback in that when the weight of a dough sheet to be supplied is not uniform, no product of a uniform weight can be produced.
Therefore, when high-quality bar-shaped bread of various sizes is prepared from a continuously fed mass of dough, an apparatus and method has been required in which the gluten network of the dough is not destroyed and a product of a uniform weight, which is not too soft, has a proper toughness to the teeth, and that has smoothly shaped surfaces where it is cut, can be produced.